I visit Reddit more or less every day. I like that they promote free speech, and the community has done great things for people. But then sometimes a large amount of users get behind something that sucks. This is from today:

Top of the front page.

It's just lame, and shows that a lot of people's sense of humor is disconnected from their conscience.

The problem with reddit is the default subreddits, I'm unsubscribed from all of them except for Videos. It's all crap. Find small subreddits that are based around things you do/like and you will have a much better time.

Reddit is a huuuuuge community, and has it fair share of racists, teenagers and assholes. That's just what comes with a huge, diverse community, otherwise it wouldn't be diverse. Downvote, and move on, or unsubscribe.

Of course Reddit is disappointing, it's generally a terrible forum community. It's dicey to complain about other forums anyway since a lot of people won't understand the references or anything like that. It's as if I decided to complain about Something Awful threads when I'd probably be the only one who knows what I'm talking about.

Stop being such a baby. It's just a joke and not even one that's meant to be hurtful. The guys short. That's not an insult, it's just the truth. If there was a photo that was called "If Shaq was Batman" and it had his head cut off because he was so tall would you care? No. Harden up.

I thought it was kind of funny. Ironically I would have never known about this or that it was on reddit till you posted it here so...thanks? Getting upset at what others thing is funny is waste of your energies.

Stop being such a baby. It's just a joke and not even one that's meant to be hurtful. The guys short. That's not an insult, it's just the truth. If there was a photo that was called "If Shaq was Batman" and it had his head cut off because he was so tall would you care? No. Harden up.

My problem with Reddit, having read it pretty regularly over the last couple months is that it's completely predictable. You click on a thread and you see where they all go within seconds, every meme, every reference, every snarky comment, everything seems to happen like clockwork. I guess they call it a hivemind for a reason! I bet you could write a computer program that just generates Reddit threads and converses with itself and would be indistinguishable from the real thing.

My biggest problem with Reddit is that there is no way to give credit to content creators. Everyone steals content, dumps it on Imgur, then links that on Reddit. There should be a tumblr-style "reblogged" system so that people have a way of giving credit where it is due.

Obviously that's just a tiny part of Reddit, and these are probably things you're not actually interested in. My point is that there is plenty of not-shit content on Reddit if you go beyond the front-page garbage. There is also some fucked up stuff; you can ignore it. If there's a topic/hobby you're interested in, chances are there is a sub-reddit for it. Also a good chance that they'll be friendly and welcoming.

@chiablo: Yep, and then reddit makes fun of itself for it. Still nothing changes.

@jazzyjeff It's all just a huge circle jerk in the default subs (I'm sure you know that). Right now, everyone is going on and on and on about Miley Cyrus and her performance at the VMA's. If you want quality content then unsubscribe from the massive subs like advice animals or funny, and find great stuff like showerbeer, internetisbeautiful, birdswitharms, and games for in depth and more mature discussions about games. Currently, my two favourite subs are darksouls and lifehacks.

My problem with Reddit is how insular it is. Due to the way it works, with the community sending the stuff that they think is worth seeing to the top of the page, you can see some amazing things. But it mostly just ends up being a big, seething pit of bacon and cats. And that's the annoying side of it, but the way it so often just appears to be a bunch of like-minded people re-affirming each others ideas and beliefs seems potentially harmful and can even lead to dangerous internet mob mentality. My views probably don't even differ very much from the majority of reddit, but when the majority all have the same way of thinking and the comments that people don't agree with get shooed out of sight, it kind of damages the potential for discourse. I mean, it's not like I'm the only one who feels this way since the most common description of reddit both outside of and within that site/community seems to be "circle-jerk", but it just doesn't seem conducive to maintaining an open-minded worldview. That and they need to get the fuck over Pokemon.